


To see is to believe

by devlandiablo



Series: O'ER THE RAMPARTS [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Explosions, Injury, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 10:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3206708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devlandiablo/pseuds/devlandiablo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve likes looking at Tony, and he doesn't know how he feels about that, because isn't that a betrayal to Bucky? Tony likes looking at Steve, and he knows how he feels about that, because how can anyone look at Steve and not see him? </p><p>Spawned from "I just really want someone to write some fic for this beautiful work of fanart: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lytfbjAZjc1qc0l8mo1_1280.jpg" I wrote this. Crossposted at LJ http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/7940.html?page=6#comments</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve, Tony & Explosions

From LJ fanart prompt: http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/7940.html?page=6#comments 

The quiet whir of Dum-E and U greets Steve as he slips into the lab, passing the bots but coming to a halt when he sees Tony asleep on the beaten-up leather sofa at the back of the room by the recharging stations. He can tell from the level of alcohol in the tumbler vs. the bottle on the coffee table, by the fact that the ice cubes haven’t even started to melt (because of course the entire Tower is at a temperature that makes Steve want to shiver, remembering how long it took him to freeze- no, he’s not thinking of that now, it’s been months, it’s full summer outside, he’s not doing this again, today’s been a decent day), and the fact that the engineer is still asleep (‘billionaire playboy genius philanthropist;’ he thinks of another brunette who had as much sass but doesn’t smile, doesn’t cry, doesn’t let anyone see), to figure that Tony had probably just sat down and passed out. He had asked Steve down here just minutes ago, and here he is, asleep.

Steve makes his way further into the lab, as quiet as possible. He can read the tiredness on the other man’s face, by how still he is, the slight flush on his cheekbones from overwork and not enough sleep or food. This last week alone they’d had four call-outs for the Avengers, on top of still cleaning up New York and dealing with Washington, and this was the first time Tony’d had any time in his lab at all in days. Steve himself had only come back from a photo shoot with Stark Industry’s press department, which is why he was still in the damned too-tight modern uniform that makes him want to claw his skin off, though he’s taken the cowl off and tucked it into one of the pouches on his utility belt and run his hands through his hair. He still feels undressed without a sidearm, but, apparently, the ‘modern’ Captain America doesn’t carry weapons other than the shield. He hates not having a sidearm with him these days.

He wants- he wants to peel off his skin, he wants to make Tony eat a sandwich and get some sunlight, he wants to take him somewhere he can be free of the pressures he still has from everyone to be THE Tony Stark; he and Steve, in the wake of the Chitauri, had hashed out just how much of their animosity was Staff-induced, really talking to each other instead of just relying on what others have said. Both men realized that they both knew what it was like to front for the camera.

Steve wants that freedom for both of them.

He takes a seat on the sectional end of the sofa, recognizing the scent in the air as solder, the safety glasses (Iron Man red) still stuck in Tony’s messy hair even as he’s slumped against the headrest, and he is wearing gloves on his hands, but of course, the reckless fool is in just a singlet (Steve refused to call them ‘wifebeater’ shirts, what a horrible name), and little red marks dot his arms where the hot sparks caught, and Tony’s feet are peeking out bare under his suit trousers. The legs are always longer than they should be, because of the lifts in Tony shoes that he thinks no one notices, so the material tends to bunch around his feet. Steve takes in the small details, setting the shield down on his right, propping his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his clasped hands, still wearing his gauntlets, hunching himself smaller so he isn’t looming over Tony even from a few feet away. 

He has tried to not look at Tony the way he wants to. He has tried not to notice his eyelashes, the curve of his lips framed by that ridiculous facial hair, the cut of muscle in his arms, the breadth of his shoulders, the spread of his legs, the way he could shelter in Steve’s bulk the way Steve had always sheltered in- no. 

Steve rubs at his chin and cheeks, bristled because he hadn’t shaved this morning, a small rebellion against the weight of all these years of ‘Captain America’ insanity that he has to pander to. He can’t walk down a street in the city and not be ambushed by fans and paparazzi, not even when he dresses as a civilian and wears a ballcap and walks like someone- someone not him. He can’t tell people the truth, the way things really were for him growing up, what he really thinks of this world and his place in it. He scrubs his hands over his face, still hunched, knowing what he wants but knowing he can’t have it, and it hurts.

“Cap?” Steve jerks back, dropping his hands from his face, to see Tony looking at him, still leaning back against the cushions but his head upright, his neck no longer relaxed and slack in sleep. Steve is close enough to see the flecks in his eyes, gold and green, and he feels the muscles in his back contract. “We get a call to assemble?”

“No.” Steve shakes his head, swallows to buy himself a minute to recover. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” Tony sits up, bracing himself on the front edge of the sofa with those blacksmith's hands. Steve looks away, at anywhere but at Tony as he stands, because if he looks, he’ll see Tony at waist-level and there are some things that even he for all his strength cannot resist. “So, I had a question about-” 

Steve doesn’t think. He just reacts when something on one of Tony’s tables lets out a sharp beep before exploding. 

The shield is in his right hand as he tackles Tony and bears him to the floor, metal and who knows what raining down on them to bounce off the disc he’s raised above their heads, covering Tony with his own body, his left arm cushioning Tony’s head from impacting the floor. Stark’s so much more breakable than he is, so much more important, and Steve’s taken shrapnel before for his men, for B-

“Move!” He rolls off Tony, scoops him up and shelters him as they break through the lab as another device beeps and explodes, a bigger explosion than the first one, a bigger piece of equipment which means more metal, jagged and hot. Steve grunts as pain tears through his side and back, even through the Kevlar of the suit, but keeps moving, intent on keeping anything from hitting Stark. They make it through the doors and Jarvis locks the lab down, spraying fire retardant from the ceiling, alarms wailing. Steve doesn’t let Tony stop moving until they’re around the corner and in the stairwell beyond the fire door. Braced against the wall, Steve is forced to stop as pain bites him.

“Just a minute.” Steve hands Tony the shield, strips off his gloves, dropping them on the concrete floor, where they thud, wetly, and reaches back to find the chunk of metal that hurts the worst, above his right kidney. He pulls at it, but it’s stuck. He hisses between his teeth, shifts to try to get a better grip on it, but it is slick with blood and in the worst position for Steve to get at.

Tony is looking at him with wide eyes. "Fuck, Steve. Jarvis, we need medical up here!"

Steve grits his teeth. “Just give me a minute, I said.” 

“Rogers, stop, you have, fuck, you’re peppered with shrapnel, it’s all over you. Stop. Moving.” Steve doesn’t listen, can’t, with the way he can feel his skin closing around the metal. Sometimes the healing factor of the serum wasn’t a good thing.

“Have to get it out.” He bites out through his teeth, finally getting a good enough grip to yank it out. He can feel bits of metal pushing through his skin, the ones that are shallow enough to be rejected. Others, he knows, are closed up inside already.

"Shit.”

He looks up at Tony, whose hands are trembling on the shield. Steve drops the shard he has finally wrenched free and it pings off the floor. He can feel blood running down over his flank, the crease of his knee. He hates getting blood in his boots. It's always a bitch to clean.

"Is there more?”

Steve nods, shuddering. He remembers when it had been worse, outside Paris that time they’d been pinned down by HYDRA, when one of Dernier’s devices had gone off too soon and Steve had been hit, remembers gentle handles having to be harsh to hold him down so they can get it all, remembers when B-

A medical team finds them there as Steve is caught between Then and Now, and they help Steve down to the infirmary, where it’s a rush of hands and scissors cutting at his uniform and the burning pain is starting to slip into an aluminum screech, the crumpling of metal and shattering of glass, the pock-pock-pock of weapons fire.

A beep, a pass of a yellow box (it looks like an ammo box that someone Jules Verned, he thinks, vaguely) over him, and someone says “No radiation present.” He can feel them pulling the shrapnel that’s embedded, but it’s not enough.

“Cut it out.”

“Captain Rogers, we can’t not treat-”

“No,” Steve grunts. “Healed already. There’s more inside. You have to cut it out.”

He lets them treat him, wishing Stark had an anesthetic that worked, gritting his teeth, determined not to yell or flinch, listening to the plink of foreign material hitting the kidney basin rhythmically, his grip warping the edge of the table as he reminds himself not to grab anyone. They're so fucking breakable. 

They scan him over and over with a metal detector until they’re sure they have it all. Twenty minutes after the explosion, he’s up and showered, dressed in the dark red scrubs the infirmary keeps stocked. Steve leaves the bathroom, hair still damp, but combed back, to find Tony looking at the bristling pile on the tray, still wearing those welding gloves and holding his shield. Tony doesn’t look up.

“Tony?” Steve is quiet but Tony jumps like Steve just shouted.

“Cap! Are you… you’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, they got it all. You?”

“I'm fine. I… you… your shield, you should have it back, I have to get back to the lab.” Tony puts the shield down on the bed and flees. Steve sighs.

“Damn it Stark.”


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the explosion- What Tony Sees

Tony looks at the security footage to triage what went wrong because Jarvis still won’t let him back in the lab, not with two unknown devices Tony had been examining having already nearly killed him today. He sees himself calling Steve down to the lab, sees himself leaving the devices on the lab table, sees himself barely take a single sip of alcohol before he’s dozing off on the sofa, Steve entering just minutes later. He sees Steve watch him quietly, taking a seat a few feet away and looking him over, smirking a little at the length of extra material from Tony’s suit trousers around his feet. He watches Steve watch him, and hmms to himself. Jarvis had told him Tony would want to look at the footage when it came to the Captain’s behavior in the lab- what did Jarvis want him to see?

He sees Steve hunch in on himself and rub his cheek with a grimace, before he jerks back, his mask sliding back into place when Tony wakes up and speaks. Just for a second, Steve had been vulnerable, let himself look unhappy, and Tony had to wake up and spoil it. Because of the various camera angles and diagnostics Jarvis has already run, he can see where Jarvis tagged the muscles in Steve’s back moving, sees heart rate and body temperature jump. Tony toggles to another screen that lets him get a closeup look on Steve’s face to see the detail he’d missed earlier.

Steve’s pupils had been dilated, he’d swallowed, he’d watched Tony’s hands before looking away when Tony stood up and stretched, perhaps intentionally not looking at Tony, who had been right there. Interesting.

He watches on the footage how mere seconds later Steve is reacting, protecting Tony with his shield, his body, at the expense of himself. He sees the explosion from the first device rain debris down on the shield, puncturing the back of the uniform at an angle that makes him hiss.,/p>

He had watched as they’d pulled the shrapnel out of Steve, as they’d cut it out. The bit Steve had pulled out of himself from his kidney hadn’t been the worst- one of the nastiest pieces had been lodged at an angle between his spine and scapula, long and jagged, and Tony had watched Steve just grit his teeth and tell them to cut it out. They'd had to go back in for a bit that had broken off. 

What painkillers they had hadn’t done anything for him- he’d just had to take it. Tony would have to work on something that could give Steve some relief because he doubted this was the last time Steve would be hurt protecting one of them. He hadn’t even learned Steve was injured during the Chitauri battle until after they’d eaten shwarma and Steve had pulled the knitting flesh of his side, getting up to bus his tray, and not been able to hide his reaction. Tony knew all too well what Chitauri weaponry did. To think he could have lost Steve that day-

"Jarvis." 

"Sir."

"Anything on the cause of the explosion yet?"

"No Sir."

Tony watches the second explosion happen again, how Steve had him up and on the move, analyzing how Steve had kept his own body between Tony and the lab, all the bits of metal and glass that would have killed Tony if he’d been hit. As the doors close behind them, and Jarvis sprays the foam retardant Tony designed in case of fire in the lab to neutralize some of the nastier chemicals he regularly works with, the camera view switches to the ones outside the lab, and Tony watches the look on Steve's face as he hustles him into the stairwell, the trail of blood behind him, and he wonders.

He'd cleaned up the blood himself. He still has Steve’s shredded uniform, already planning dozens of upgrades, because the one SHIELD had given him obviously wasn’t doing the job. What if he hadn’t been wearing it when he came down to the lab? What if he’d come down in the horrible (horribly adorable) plaid shirt and khakis Steve favored, with at best the motorcycle jacket to protect him, and probably not even that? If he hadn’t been wearing the uniform, he’d have taken the full brunt of the blast: the burn marks on the uniform could have so easily been Steve’s skin. Healing shrapnel wounds, even when they’d had to cut him open to get the deeper bits out, was bad enough. Fast-forward healing on burns? How had Steve not screamed when they were treating him? 

He watches as Steve hands him the shield, sees himself take it with no consideration for the fact that normally he cannot tolerate being handed things. He watches Steve yank on that chunk of metal again and has to pause the feed. He looks at the clock- it hadn’t even been an hour since he’d given Steve his shield back and escaped. 

He takes a sip of coffee that he doesn’t really taste and starts the video again. He watches his own hands tremble on the shield as Steve yanks the shard out and drops it. He watches Steve shudder when he asks if there is more, and how Steve’s eyes go distant a bit, how he gets pale under the skin and Steve won’t respond when he talks to him, when the medical team gets there, fucking finally, it had felt like forever, but it had been two minutes from the time of the first explosion to when they’d found them in the stairwell.

"Need to do better." 

He watches as Jarvis’ diagnostics continue to tell him what Steve went through when they were cutting off the uniform, when Steve wouldn’t respond and they were asking Tony what the debris might be, whether it was irradiated or if there was chance of chemical contamination and Tony had had to tell them he didn’t know. He’d been working on the devices they’d gathered from the fight of the most recent whack-a-mole villain, earlier this morning in Queens, and he’d wanted to ask Steve a question when he’d taken a break and he didn’t know. He was supposed to know what those things were, that was his job, he was supposed to understand the things that put his people in danger, and he’d had no answer for them.

He watches the feed from the infirmary camera as Steve blinks back to himself with a groan, how he tells them to cut it out, how he’d told them they’d have to cut the shrapnel out, how the administration of the painkillers had done nothing, how Steve had just had to grit his teeth and how they’d taken out a goddamned kidney dish full of shrapnel that would have killed anyone else. The kidney wound alone should have put Steve in a bed, but the idiot had been up, showered and in dark red scrubs (Iron Man colors, whispers some part of Tony’s brain, with how gold his hair is) when he’d found Tony looking at the shrapnel, still clutching the shield like a teddy bear.

He watches the look on his own face, how he didn’t look up when Steve came in and jumped when Steve spoke. Steve had been so nonchalant when he’d said he was okay, that they’d gotten all of the shrapnel, like it was no big deal, and asked after Tony, Tony who doesn't have a scratch on him, because of Steve.

Tony winces as he watches himself put the shield on the bed, not even daring to hand it back to Steve lest he see how his hands are shaking, watches himself turn tail and run for the lab. He watches Steve sigh and curse.

Damn it, Stark. Damn it, Stark, indeed.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, Sir?”

“Please bring me up a cross-section of all the footage you have of Steve, in the Tower, from the Helicarrier, his time in public, going back to his earliest films from the Army, everything.” Tony sips at his coffee and smiles, sad, when Jarvis speaks up a few moments later.

“You saw it.”

“Yes, J, I did. We’re going to take care of him. He’s one of ours now.”

“Yes, Sir, he is.” Jarvis runs the search program and Tony plots.


End file.
